What sayeth the already-read-ers: Should I finish “The Magicians?”
I’m halfway through, stalled out just as the protagonist graduates from the cynic’s version of Hogwarts, and torn. I’ve got so much else on my to-read shelf: Lynn Messina’s gender-switching “Prejudice and Pride,” Georgette Heyer’s “Grand Sophy” (again, I’m partway in, but that’s because whenever I start, I can’t put it down and I need my sleep), Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Schaefer’s “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” and the list goes on. But I’m not quite sure I don’t want to keep going.
Every month I share not only the books I’ve been loving, but also the ones I’ve been reading, in total, including the books I thought I would read and the books I read part of and the books that just turned out to be aspirational. I felt as if I did a lot of reading since my last Shelf, Bed Table, iPad post (describing my discovery of poetry), but looking over the stacks, I find I did a lot of partial reading. A little of this, a few chapters of that, and a whole lot of but-I-don’t-want-to-finish-it-too-fast (books by Mary Karr, Ruth Reichl and Mary Elizabeth Williams).
I did zip through two books. “The Mushroom Hunters,” a fascinating work of narrative nonfiction about commercial wild mushroom foraging, and which turned out to be exactly the book for me — a topic I’m interested in, a narrator whose style I liked, stories about characters (people, really) I came to care about but none of the nagging sense that I should be working that often comes when I read work that’s more in my own field. It took me about a week to finish, maybe more, and I enjoyed it all.
I found “Pioneer Girl” — from Bich Minh Nguyen, not Laura Ingalls Wilder — on the sale shelves at the wonderful Brookline Books (I had gone to hear Jessica Lahey read from “The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed”). Here’s what stuck with me from the story of the daughter of immigrants growing to identify deeply with Rose Wilder Lane: the way family relationships are so hard to navigate as a young adult, and the challenge daughters and sisters find in getting out from under the ways their mothers and brothers see them, along with the perfect portrayal of that drifting period when career and an adult life seem just out of reach. Plus, a little alternate history mystery (that takes some liberties with the lives of the Wilder women in an intriguing way). That was two nights spent staying up too late and completely failing to pack lunches or do dishes.
We also finished our family read-aloud. I broke my rule of reading only books I had read myself and loved for the second time (the first was for Neil Gaiman’s “Fortunately, the Milk”) and read “The Penderwicks.” If you’re in the market for something to read at bedtime for older children (mine are 9, 10. 11 and 14, and yes, even the 14-year-old listened to most of this one), “The Penderwicks” is perfect. Four sisters and their father spend three event-filled weeks at a summer cottage on the property of a larger house, making friends and enemies of the people who live there. It’s an exciting story, with lots of characters to identify with, and manages to sit on the boundary between classic children’s stories and a more modern sensibility, mostly by inserting bold, fresh female characters into the leading roles. Everyone wants the second in the series next.
Now, I’m in the middle of so much, trying to decide what to finish off next, and when I dare pick up a novel that I may not be able to easily put down. Fall is a great time for books (so many new releases) what are you reading now that should be teetering off the tops of my stacks?
Books I Finished
LANGDON COOK “The Mushroom Hunters”
JEANNE BIRDSALL “The Penderwicks”
BICH MINH NGUYEN “Pioneer Girl”
Books I’m Still Reading
MARY KARR “The Art of Memoir”
LEV GROSSMAN “The Magicians”
GEORGETTE HEYER “The Grand Sophy”
JORDAN ELLENBERG “How Not to Be Wrong”
RUTH REICHL “My Kitchen Year”
DALE RUSSAKOFF “The Prize”
KATHRYN J. EDIN and H. LUKE SHAEFER “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America”
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS ” A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles”
Books I’ll Read Next
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER “Unfinished Business”
MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD “Astonish Me”
LYNN MESSINA “Prejudice and Pride”
ELIZABETH LABAR “The Restaurant Critic’s Wife”
EULA BISS “On Immunity”
SHERRY TURKLE “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”
ANNIE BARROWS “The Truth According to Us”
LISA DAMOUR ” Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood”
Books I Bought
RUTH REICHL “My Kitchen Year”
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER “Unfinished Business”
AMY STEWART “Girl Waits With Gun”
GRAEME SIMSION “The Rosie Effect”
JAMIE HOLMES “Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing”
BICH MINH NGUYEN “Pioneer Girl”
Books I Was Given by Publicists or Editors
LYNN MESSINA “Prejudice and Pride”
ELIZABETH LABAR “The Restaurant Critic’s Wife”
DALE RUSSAKOFF “The Prize”
EULA BISS “On Immunity”
SHERRY TURKLE “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”
CINDY PIERCE “Sexploitation: Helping Kids Develop Healthy Sexuality in a Porn-Driven World”
Books Lent to Me by Friends and Family
LANGDON COOK “The Mushroom Hunters”
Books I Thought I Would Read or Finish But Didn’t
LAUREN GROFF “Fates and Furies”
Follow KJ Dell’Antonia on Twitter at @KJDellAntonia or find her on Facebook and Google+.
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Source:Shelf, iPad, Bed Table: Unfinished Reading, October 2015